Peking
— A Soviet citizen and two Chinese were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in the country's most sensational espionage case since the two communist giants split in the 1960s, the official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday. The Soviet citizen was sentenced to seven years in prison for photographing military installations for Russia in 1974. The two Chinese were sentenced to death by firing squad; later one sentence was reduced to hard labor.

Xinhua said all three spies pleaded guilty and were convicted before courts in the country's far northeast Heilongjiang Province, on the extremely tense and sensitive border with the Soviet Union.